Walid Raad: The Art of Fiction in a Post-Truth World
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47613/reflektif.2022.69Keywords:
Walid Raad, post-truth, parafiction, fiction, contemporary artAbstract
Recent years have seen an upsurge of fictional strategies in contemporary art. Generally referred to as parafiction, these artworks offer a construction of imaginary persons and events that function, and are perceived as real-life entities. As one of its foremost representatives in contemporary art, the Lebanese artist Walid Raad has long turned to fictional strategies in order to question the epistemological instability of various media in the construction of knowledge. Drawing particular attention to the discursive frameworks in which “objective” media participate, the aim of his art is not to deconstruct, but to localize truth. Deliberately blurring the distinction between fact and fiction, I argue in this paper that Raad’s art mirrors the aesthetic and epistemological structure of the post-truth era. At the same time, I offer a consideration of the epistemological role of fiction in his work and explore the political importance of parafiction in a post-truth world.
instability of various media in the construction of knowledge. Drawing particular attention to the discursive frameworks in which
“objective” media participate, the aim of his art is not to deconstruct, but to localize truth. Deliberately blurring the distinction between
fact and fiction, I argue in this paper that Raad’s art mirrors the aesthetic and epistemological structure of the post-truth era. At the
same time, I offer a consideration of the epistemological role of fiction in his work and explore the political importance of parafiction
in a post-truth world.
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